She answered smiling, for the memory of her home was sweet to her, “Outside, the Moon is cold and barren; but within it is very warm and rich and fertile; more beautiful than any place I have seen on Earth. It is there we live; and we have flocks, and herds, and woods, and rivers, and harbours, and seas. Also we have great cities built inside the Moon’s crust, for the Moon is a great hollow shell, and we walk upon its inner surface and are warm. The sunlight comes to us through craters and clefts in the ground; and the beams of it are like solid pillars of gold that quiver and sway as they shoot upwards into the opal twilight of our world; and the shine and the warmth of it come to us, and colour the air above our heads; but we are safe from its full light falling on us, for the ground is between us and it. Only when we pass through to the outer side do we become pale and faint, a mere whisper of our former selves. And then we are so light that if we step upon a moonbeam it will bear our weight; and the moonbeam carries us swiftly as its own light travels, till it reaches the Earth: so we come. But to return there is another way.” And when the Prince asked her, she told him of the other way back into the Moon. “When we wish to return,” she went on “(for the falling light of a moonbeam cannot carry us back), we must go where there is a pool of still water, and wait for the reflection of the Moon to fall on it; and when the Moon is full, and throws its image into the water, then we dive down, and with our lips touch the reflection of its face, crying, ‘Open, open to me, for I am a Moon-child!’ And the Moon will open her face like a door of pearl, and let us pass in; and when she draws her reflection out of the pool, we find ourselves once again among our own people and in our own land. Many of us have so come and so returned,” she sighed deeply, “but I fear that I shall never again return.” Then the Prince asked her further whose power it was that held her captive; and she told him how she had dropped the pearl that her mother had given her, and had come down seeking it. Then she said, “In the Moon we have many jewels, for we have opals and onyxes, and pearls and moonstones, but we have no rubies, or emeralds, or sapphires, or stones of a single colour, such as you have. Therefore, we have a passion for these things, and our merchants come down and bring them back to us at a great price.